Step Up Travel is a Global Network for Travelers, established to address the needs of a world that suffers from broadening financial inequality. It also offers a more rigorous virtual global forum through which people can come together to address the needs of small communities across the world.Step Up Travel was created to be the meeting ground where travelers connect with local people who want to offer their own services and goods. The traveler is more authentically immersed in the destination country, its culture, and its people, while the local people advertising their services can gain from self-employment. So much commercial tourism stands in the way of interesting cultural exchange between traveling parties and local people. It stands not only as a cultural barrier, controlled by large global companies, but also an economic barrier to the people of destination countries who make their culture what it is.
So Step Up provides a way for travelers to connect directly with local to help empower local populations who stand at the margins of a tourism industry dominated by big business--and the result is a more authentic and adventurous way to experience another country and its people.
Step Up Travel has often been called the “free market of traveling” because it is a site that allows anyone or any organization of any country to post an advertisement for their services or goods for travelers to book--private guides, short-term apartment rentals, non-profit organizations that need volunteers, language instructors, hosts for community events, artist’s work, chauffeurs, private chefs, sports instructors, etc.
Travelers can formally associate with one another and "link" profiels so that they can build their own personal international network.Travelers and organizations can also start collaborative projects to address the inequalities that they witness in any part of the world; collaborative projects can be artistic, political, humanitarian, economic, socialist, democratice, etc. It is meant to be a dynamic forum through which an effort can be sustained by people across the world. We witness so many things that need to be changed in the world, but yet we lack a formal way of addressing it in a sustained fashion. "Collaboratives" allows for that to happen.
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